I Am a Zionist - Video Transcript
I’m a Zionist. If I walked into a party in New Zealand and announced that, I would probably get a worse reaction than if I walked in and said I was a drug-addicted, ISIS-sympathizing prostitute. It’s not the kind of thing one sees in polite company these days.
Zionism is a negative term—emotionally and politically loaded, carrying many bad connotations. It is often associated with crimes against humanity, fascism, racism, apartheid, and colonialism. But Zionism is none of these things.
So, what is Zionism? Zionism is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland, Israel. The Jewish people are the indigenous people of Israel. Archaeology, history, and genetics all prove this.
The first Kingdom of Israel was established over 3,000 years ago. Since that time, the Jewish people have been ruled by successive occupiers, including the Romans, the Babylonians, and, since the 7th century, the Arabs. But they always had a presence in the land, and Jewish people outside the land always prayed toward and yearned for the re-establishment of a sovereign homeland.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to realize the Jewish people’s aspiration for a homeland. At the same time, they also voted for the Palestinians—then simply known as the Arabs living in the area—to have their own homeland. The Arab people declined that opportunity, while the Jewish people accepted it, even though it fell far short of what they had hoped for. Therefore, the United Nations offered a two-state solution, and the Arabs turned it down.
Almost every country in the world has been established through war, negotiation, or colonialism. New Zealand was established through a combination of these things. Israel, as a nation-state, has more legitimacy than almost any other country in the world, if not every other country.
There is a misconception that Israel was built on stolen Palestinian land. Palestinians have never had sovereignty in the land. They have been offered several opportunities to have sovereignty and part of the land but declined all those offers. Furthermore, between 1948 and 1967, they were under occupation by Jordan, and Jordan never created an independent Palestinian state for them. To say that Israel was built on stolen Palestinian land is simply not true.
Jews have a tragic history of persecution. If there is any people in the world who have a need for self-determination, it is the Jewish people. They have suffered through pogroms, ghettos, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition. They have been forcibly converted, culturally assimilated, ghettoized, exterminated, and assaulted for as long as we can all remember.
Israel is delegitimized and demonized like no other country in the world. Ironically, that very antipathy toward Israel makes me feel insecure about living in New Zealand and accentuates, for me, the need for a Jewish homeland. I hope I never have to, but I need to know that Israel is there for me to escape to should the need arise—just as it has been there for many thousands, if not millions, of other people since its establishment.
I’m a Zionist. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a proud and patriotic New Zealander. I can be both Jewish and support the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in Israel while also loving and being loyal to New Zealand.
